By Nayak Paudel
Kathmandu, Feb. 20: It was on the night of December 21, 2020 when Kishan Thapa’s motorcycle (Province 3-02-010 Pa 7141) got stolen from his house at Ward 8 of Suryabinayak Municipality, Bhaktapur. Similarly, a month later on January 21, Pemba Tamang’s motorcycle (Province 2-020 Pa 8827) also got stolen from the front of his rented room in Jagati, Bhaktapur.
Thapa and Tamang had lodged complaints at the Metropolitan Police Circle, Jagati following which the authorities began their search. During the investigation, police located both the motorcycles in Okhaldhunga district during a regular checking.
Through the coordination with the District Police Office of Okhaldhunga, Bhaktapur Police was able to arrest three individuals and confiscate two stolen motorcycles. The trio – Kul Bahadur Tamang, 22; Panchaman Tamang, 28; and Govinda Gautam, 24 – was presented in the Bhaktapur District Court as the police investigate the case further.
Likewise, it was on January 17 when the motorcycle of Kumar Shrestha was recovered by a team from Bhaktapur Police while two individuals had stolen it and were fleeing. Shrestha’s motorcycle (Province 3-02-017 Pa 7048) was stolen from Araniko Highway along Ward 5 of Madhyapur Thimi Municipality.
A team led by Police Inspector Sudan KC from the Metropolitan Police Range, Bhaktapur, arrested Phurba Tamang, 23, and Raju Tamang, 21, while they were taking away the stolen motorcycle.
However, these have not been the only cases that took place in Bhaktapur; many two-wheelers have been stolen in the past two months and a few thieves have been arrested as well.
According to the record of the Metropolitan Traffic Police Division, over 1,000 two-wheelers have already been stolen last year while the division has been able to find only around 300 of them.
The record also shows that over 1,600 two-wheelers got stolen in the previous year while only around 350 were found. The stolen two-wheelers are also found years after they were lifted.
“The cases of two-wheeler stealing have declined if we compare with the data of the previous years. However, still a worrying number of vehicles is getting stolen. The major difficulty lies in locating the stolen vehicle because it reaches unthought parts of the country,” said Superintendent of Police (SP) Shyam Krishna Adhikari, spokesperson at the Metropolitan Traffic Police Division.
According to SP Adhikari, the stolen two-wheelers are first taken outside the valley with a different number plate and are sold to people living in the rural areas of the neighbouring districts of Kathmandu. Likewise, some thieves also dismantle the vehicle and sell some important parts.
“Whatever the thieves do after stealing, they do it for money. Since it is a source for quality money and the jail sentence is meted out for the crime, the cases of two-wheeler theft are still common in the valley as well as outside the valley,” said SP Adhikari.
Authorities have requested the public to keep their two-wheelers in designated parking space and properly – keeping the handle locked or even using anti-theft accessories – on their house premises.
“We coordinate with police and traffic across the country for a stolen motorcycle because the thieves sell a stolen motorcycle from one district to another. We try finding all the stolen two-wheelers at the earliest but it is not easy all the time,” said SP Adhikari.